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The University of Guadalajara, which has about 270,000 students, is the second largest public university system in Mexico.

The University of Guadalajara, the second largest public university in Mexico, will open an office on the campus of Arizona State University to help develop existing academic collaborations and foster outreach to Hispanic communities off campus.

The office, which will be staffed by one full-time University of Guadalajara faculty member, will open this week as 27 top administrators from the university take a seminar to learn how ASU operates, ASU officials said. The University of Guadalajara has about 120,000 students in its university system and about 150,000 in its high school system.

This is the first office by a Latin American university to open formally at ASU, said Rafael Rangel Sostmann, a special advisor to the ASU president.

The office’s projects include continuing a collaboration between the two universities studying the sustainable development of cities, Rangel Sostmann said. It will also allow the University of Guadalajara to organize outreach events among Hispanic communities off campus, he added.

"To let them know more about Mexico, the possibilities that somebody who lives in Mexico has, the educational system, how it works," Rangel Sostmann said.

Other universities across the Southwest have recently made collaboration deals with Mexican colleges and universities.

Earlier this month, the governors of Arizona and the neighboring state of Sonora signed an agreement to help the Northern Arizona University and the Universidad Tecnologica de Hermosillo have student and faculty exchanges.